110+ Harper Lee Quotes On Reading, Writing And Courage

Harper Lee was an American novelist best known for her 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Her novel deals with the issues of racism and injustice in the American South, and has become a classic of modern American literature. She was a reclusive figure and published only one other book, Go Set a Watchman, in 2015. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Harper Lee on life, reading, writing.

Top 10 Harper Lee Quotes

1. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
2. The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets -
3. Real courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
4. He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning.
5. People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
6. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
7. Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.
8. It's not necessary to tell all you know.
9. Things are always better in the morning.
10. Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

Harper Lee Short Quotes

• Way back about nineteen-twenty there was a Klan... The Ku Klux's gone... It'll never come back.
• People in their right minds never take pride in their talents.
• Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.
• We're paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It's that simple.
• It's not time to worry yet
• I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year. Scout
• Let the dead bury the dead.
• Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.
• You can choose your friends, but you sho' can't choose your family.
• When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake.

Harper Lee Quotes About Life

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable. — Harper Lee

There are just some kind of men…who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one. — Harper Lee

They're ugly, but those are the facts of life. — Harper Lee

As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it -- whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash. — Harper Lee

For the life of me, I did not understand how he[Atticus] could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Army relic. — Harper Lee

They're real strong magic, they make you have good luck. Not like fried chicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life n' good health, n' passin' six weeks tests...these are real valuable to somebody. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Reading

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces. — Harper Lee

Southern lawyers don't read novels much. — Harper Lee

I'm Charles Baker Harris...I can read — Harper Lee

I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Writing

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself. — Harper Lee

Characters make their own plot. The dimensions of the characters determine the action of the novel. — Harper Lee

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. — Harper Lee

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent. — Harper Lee

To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it whether you think you have it in you or not. Everyday. Alone. Without interruption. Contrary to what most people think, there is no glamour to writing. In fact, it's heartbreak most of the time. — Harper Lee

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write. — Harper Lee

About your writing with you left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Ewell?" "I most positively am not, I can use one hand good as the other. One hand good as the other. — Harper Lee

We said good-bye, and Dill went inside the house. He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. "Yawl write, hear?" he bawled after us. — Harper Lee

Writing is something you'll never learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there. — Harper Lee

I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Courage

You rarely win, but sometimes you do. — Harper Lee

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. — Harper Lee

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. - Atticus Finch — Harper Lee

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Love

I'm still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries. — Harper Lee

There's no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There's no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be. — Harper Lee

I do my best to love everybody — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Folks

...but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. — Harper Lee

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. — Harper Lee

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. — Harper Lee

It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike--in the second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. — Harper Lee

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. — Harper Lee

Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience. — Harper Lee

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off. — Harper Lee

I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. — Harper Lee

Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. — Harper Lee

No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Walter's as smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he has to stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Jem, I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Matter

You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fighting with your head for a change... — Harper Lee

This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home. — Harper Lee

You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't. — Harper Lee

A mob's always made up of people, no matter what. Mr. Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southern town is always made up of people you know--doesn't say much for them, does it? — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Quotes About Atticus

Summer, and he watches his children's heart break. Autumn again and Boo's children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough. — Harper Lee

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men. — Harper Lee

Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum. — Harper Lee

There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them. — Harper Lee

Atticus, he was real nice. Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them. — Harper Lee

hold your head high and keep those fists down - Atticus Finch — Harper Lee

It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. — Harper Lee

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand. — Harper Lee

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it. — Harper Lee

That proves something- that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. — Harper Lee

Harper Lee Famous Quotes And Sayings

Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. — Harper Lee

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal. — Harper Lee

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of another... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. — Harper Lee

summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat;it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape. — Harper Lee

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends. — Harper Lee

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. — Harper Lee

Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal. — Harper Lee

Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. — Harper Lee

Now...in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. — Harper Lee

There's a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep 'em all away from you. That's never possible. — Harper Lee

Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad. — Harper Lee

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em. — Harper Lee

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl. — Harper Lee

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived. — Harper Lee

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about? — Harper Lee

When stalking one’s prey, it is best to take one’s time. Say nothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge. — Harper Lee

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. — Harper Lee

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. — Harper Lee

Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature. — Harper Lee

So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. — Harper Lee

If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside. — Harper Lee

As a reader I loathe introductions...Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity. — Harper Lee

Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him. — Harper Lee

They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night. — Harper Lee

Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in. — Harper Lee

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood. — Harper Lee

Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win. — Harper Lee

Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere. — Harper Lee

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you're working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn't dream of interrupting on the golf course. — Harper Lee

That boy is your company. And if he wants to eat up that tablecloth, you let him, you hear? — Harper Lee

Best way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. — Harper Lee

Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. — Harper Lee

Hey, Mr. Cunningham. How's your entailment gettin' along? — Harper Lee

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. — Harper Lee

Somewhere, I had received the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the best they could with the sense they had, but Aunt Alexandra was of the opinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had been squatting on one patch of land the finer it was. — Harper Lee

Mutual defiance made them alike. — Harper Lee

I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society. — Harper Lee

Nothin’s real scary except in books. — Harper Lee

See there?" Jem was scowling triumphantly. "Nothin' to it. I swear, Scout, sometimes you act so much like a girl its mortifyin — Harper Lee

I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work. — Harper Lee

Jen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testament diction, and were at times free to interrupt Atticus for a translation when it was beyond our understanding. — Harper Lee

I never expected any sort of success with 'Mockingbird'... I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. — Harper Lee

I was not so sure, but Jem told me I was being a girl, that girls always imagined things, that’s why other people hated them so, and if I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some to play with. — Harper Lee

Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves. — Harper Lee

There is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is the court. — Harper Lee

Try fighting with your head for a change... it's a good one, even if it does resist learning. — Harper Lee

Finders were keepers unless title was proven. — Harper Lee

Well, they're Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you at golf. — Harper Lee

You can pet him, Mr. Arthur. He's asleep. — Harper Lee

Folks don't like to have somebody around knowing more than they do. It aggravates em. You're not gonna change any of them by talking right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language. — Harper Lee

I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,' said Dill. Jem and I stopped in our tracks. Yes sir, a clown,' he said. 'There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.' You got it backwards, Dill,' said Jem. 'Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them.' Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. — Harper Lee

The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. — Harper Lee

Wordsworth was right when he said that we trail clouds of glory as we come into the world, that we are born with a divine sense of perception. As we grow older, the world closes in on us, and we gradually lose the freshness of viewpoint that we had as children. That is why I think children should get to know this country while they are young. — Harper Lee

Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant. — Harper Lee

Life Lessons by Harper Lee

1. Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, teaches us the importance of understanding and compassion for others, no matter their background or beliefs.
2. It also emphasizes the power of standing up for what is right and the importance of having a strong moral compass.
3. Finally, it shows us the power of courage and resilience in the face of adversity and injustice.